“For Limited Times”: The Supreme Court Finds the Copyright Term Extension Act Constitutional in Eldred v. Ashcroft, but When Does It End?
Sue Ann Mota In 1993 a European Union directive extended the copyright term to the author’s life plus seventy years. The United States followed suit in 1998 with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which, like the E.U. directive, extended the copyright term for an individual’s works by twenty years, resulting in a term of the author’s life plus seventy years. It also extended the term for anonymous, pseudonymous, or works made for hire by twenty years, resulting in a term of ninety-five years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first. The CTEA also applied retroactively,...
Google’s Literary Quest in Peril
Michael Goldstein Recently, Google, Inc. (hereinafter “Google”), owner of the eponymous search engine, partnered with several libraries, in an effort to make their collections available for search on the Internet. This project has come under attack by The Author’s Guild (hereinafter “The Guild”). The Guild complains that scanning and uploading copyrighted works without the authors’ consent violates their rights under the Copyright Act. Google counters that its use of sections from the copyrighted works falls under the “fair use” doctrine described in the Copyright Act. However, the Guild notes that in order to use these sections, Google first reproduced the...
Repairing the Bayh-Dole Act: A Proposal for Restoring Non-Profit Access to University Science
Aaron Miller The United States government invests billions of dollars every year in scientific research. Government agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA and the Pentagon directly employ legions of scientists and engineers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds a tremendous amount of biomedical research. Besides running its own labs, the NIH gives generous grants to hundreds of universities and medical schools, and to the thousands of research professors who fill them. The federal government today provides about 60% of the total research funding for America’s many prestigious research universities. In addition, the government pays private, for-profit contractors...
P2P File-Sharing: What the Supreme Court Has an Opportunity to Consider
Margo E. K. Reder When the United States Supreme Court hears Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. (04-480) on March 29th, it has an opportunity to consider for the first time, the rights, responsibilities and liabilities of p2p network creators and their users, the content industry, and ISPs. Over 25 of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates joined together in petitioning the Supreme Court for a grant of certiorari. Petitioners characterize this case as “one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this Court. Resolution of the question presented here will largely determine the value, indeed the very significance, of copyright...